Ted Cruz Tells NAACP, Martin Luther King How To Civil Rights Good
PREVIOUSLY:
Sorry, GOP, You’re The Party Of President Klan Robe Now, Not Lincoln
Ted Cruz Being Incorrect A-Hole About Civil Rights History Again
Cruz promotes the bogus right-wing narrative that white Southern Democrats were really racist, but then Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement fixed all that with the help of noble Republicans. Apparently, Black people just got really confused and abandoned all their allies in the Republican Party. Only Clarence Thomas, Tim Scott, and Candace Owens have the special They Live glasses to see that Democrats are the true racists.
![Ted Cruz tweet: "Nonsense. That shameful filibuster [of the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act] was led by Democrats -- your party. My party -- the Republicans -- proudly voted for the Civil Rights Act in much higher percentages than the racist Dems."](https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8zMzczMjExOC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTcyNTMzODU2MX0.Uq8ceW1A7D9LJ5Bwz9ynkmSUHIaJtLDXke1bOOtFbzM/img.png?width=980)
Cruz claims that racist Democrats led the filibuster against the Civil Rights Act and that his party "proudly voted" for the legislation in larger numbers than Democrats. This is masterful trolling, considering that in Texas itself, the Democratic senator (Ralph Yarborough) voted for the Civil Rights Act, and the Republican (John Tower) opposed it. Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act and his Republican opponent Barry Goldwater opposed it. Dr. King described the 1964 Republican National Convention as "the frenzied wedding ... of the KKK with the radical Right."
It didn't matter if Goldwater himself was as personally racist as Strom Thurmond. They still shared a common cause.
Goldwater said he supported the white Southern position on civil rights, which was that each and every state had a sovereign right to control its laws. The Arizona Republican argued that each American has the right to decide whom to hire, whom to do business with and whom to welcome in his or her restaurant. The senator was right at home with Southern politicians who called the Civil Rights Act an attack on "the Southern way of life."
It's especially insulting that Cruz treats political parties as fixed entities. Bob Dole complained in 2015 that Cruz "uses the word 'conservative' more than he ever uses the word 'Republican.'" Cruz usually describes himself as a "conservative" or a "constitutionalist," so it's not a stretch to imagine him as a Goldwater Boy. The Republicans who'd supported civil rights were liberals and (at best) moderates, and they were purged from the party once Ronald Reagan was elected.
The former California governor said the Voting Rights Act was "humiliating to the South" and only grudgingly extended it in 1982 after political pressure. Reagan vetoed the Civil Rights Restoration Act in 1988 and his Equal Opportunity Commission, as well as his Justice Department, prosecuted fewer civil rights cases than they had under Jimmy Carter, the former governor of Georgia.
Republicans might insist on calling themselves the "party of Lincoln," but it was the spiritual descendants of John Wilkes Booth who stormed the Capitol on January 6 and who control the party today.
[NPR]
Follow Stephen Robinson on Twitter if it still exists.
Catch SER on his new podcast, The Play Typer Guy.
Did you know SER has his own YouTube Channel? Well, now you do, so go subscribe right now!
Click the widget to keep your Wonkette ad-free and feisty.
Louisiana Wingnut Rep. Clay Higgins Bulldozes Protester. WHAR ASSAULT CHARGES?
In the first video, Burdett shouts questions while Gosar is speaking, asking about his appearance at a confab held by neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes, and about that embarrassing campaign ad made by Gosar's own siblings, urging people not to vote for him. As Freedom Cockups try to tell Burdett to leave, Higgins steps in to promise he'll answer all Burdett's questions later (about Gosar, sure!) if the young man will just stop recording and be quiet. Higgins does get right up in Burdett's face to deliver that offer of help.
In the first video, Higgins fairly calmly introduces himself and says, "All I’m asking you to do is just peacefully stand by with your camera and I promise you — look at me — I’ll come talk to you straight up and answer all your questions. Fair enough?"
And yes, Burdett wanted to know how on earth Higgins would be in a position to know anything about Gosar's very public embarrassment.
But Burdett hadda go and persist. While Boebert spoke, he asked her about her divorce, and asked her whether it was at all related to that time in 2017 when her restaurant customers got diarrhea from tainted pork sliders. Sure, it was a rude, nonsensical, pesky question. And goddamn it, it was also perfectly legal because this is America and we can ask rude stupid questions of our elected leaders in public, Crom bless our First Amendment!
And because we are indeed a nation of laws, our elected leaders are not allowed to assault us just for being annoying, although that's what Higgins did. Here's video from another angle, showing Higgins grabbing Burdett to eject him (nearly knocking over another person in the audience) and manhandling Burdett away from the speakers all the way to the sidewalk.
Burdett wasn't harmed or arrested; he told the Daily Beast that he was questioned for about a half hour by Capitol Police and told he could go. But he was certainly none too happy that the Capitol Cops didn't seem very interested in hearing him tell them he'd been assaulted by a member of Congress.
“It’s one thing for anybody to do that,” he said of Higgins’ behavior. “But for a sitting U.S. congressperson to think that that’s OK—it just shows an extra level of entitlement, that they feel they’re untouchable and the law doesn’t apply to them.”
For his part, Higgins, a former sheriff who loves to act the Tough Guy, later took to Twitter to lie about the encounter, claiming that Burdett was "a 103M" (police code for "disturbance by a mental person," never mind the bad English usage) and insisting in an attached video that Burdett (an "agitator activist") was "very disruptive and threatening, in violation of the law."
\u201cActivist was a 103M. Threatening. He was escorted out and turned over to Capitol Police. Textbook.\u201d— Rep. Clay Higgins (@Rep. Clay Higgins) 1684437436
Higgins gives himself credit in the video for having "successfully de-escalated the situation," a phrase with which we're certain the Inigo Montoya meme would take issue. He also claims that Burdett "aggressively disrupted" Boebert and "approached her in a threatening manner," which just isn't the case. He was rude and shouty, not threatening.
Say, is this a good place to mention that in 2007, Higgins, then in law enforcement, was accused of beating up an innocent bystander to an arrest, and then lying to Internal affairs to cover it up? The former cop also busted for helping with that alleged cover-up is now a congressional aide to Higgins. Higgins resigned before he could be punished for that incident.
Burdett told the Daily Beast that he's now "evaluating my options" and that "if it looks like there is a strong case for assault and [there is] an attorney willing to take on the case, I am absolutely prepared to press charges." On Twitter, when Burdett asked for any attorneys to tell him if they thought he had a case, civil rights attorney Andrew C. Laufer replied, "Yes, assault, battery, and a potential civil rights violation."
Former US Attorney and current MSNBC legal commentator Joyce Vance was succinct: "Looks like an assault to me?"
[Daily Beast / Lafayette Daily Advertiser / Salon / Nola.com]
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by reader donations! If you can, please give $5 or $10 monthly so we can keep bringing you the hard-hitting news of tough guy members of Congress taking fascism into their own hands.
